More: A Novel (36 page)

I sat in a bank, peering at the number on the small slip in my hand, waiting for my turn. I had two large bags with me. They were filled with Ahad’s money. I’d thought the most reasonable thing to do would be to open an account to deposit all the money.

In reality I was constantly dwelling on something so I could forget what I’d seen in that hole on Dust Street. On other things … at least, I was trying. I had no intention of facing the fact that my father had killed my mother and some other person I didn’t know. If I were to go down that kind of acceptance lane, I might find myself at the dead-end possibility that the man with my mother had been her lover. I might even hit a wall built of the likelihood that he was my real father.

For this likelihood would have been perfect explanation for the mercurial way Ahad had treated me for as long as he was alive. After all, the way Ahad looked at me had forever been loaded with the question, “Do I love you or kill you?” With those pale blue eyes of his! Just like mine! But what if my mother had found another pair of blue eyes to fall in love with? There, once again, I’d been unable to stop myself from dwelling. When there was enough morphine sulfate in my bloodstream I wouldn’t have to think about any of it. But clearly there wasn’t enough.

I’d first carried the bags of money to the shed before going down to Kandalı at rabid-dog speed to return with the biggest bags I was able to buy. Then I’d dragged the two bags over Dust Street to the main road where I’d waited. After a half-hour wait, I’d flagged down a cab passing by and, when the driver asked where to, said the word that caused his eyes spring wide open: “Izmir!”

After a two-and-a-half hour trip, I paid the driver for the most lucrative run of his life and got out of the car. The spot I got off was in front of the biggest hotel of the city, which up until now I’d only heard of. The man at the entrance, dressed like the general of a nonexistent army, declined to let me in due to my appearance, but the bills I handed him had a pacifying effect. The real issue wasn’t how I looked. I stank so badly the cab driver had had the windows down for the whole ride.

After the mandatory chat at reception, and a down payment sufficient to convince them I could stay there, I was able to go up to my room. The only thing that enabled me to struggle through all this was the dream of the morphine sulfate I would unite with soon. Such a dream it was that it had given me the strength to endure being in the cramped space of a cab with another person …

Up in the room I took as quick a shower as was possible and left with the bags once more. To the driver of the cab I caught, I said, “I need to find a pharmacy,” adding, “I’m kind of in a hurry!” I really was because I couldn’t take it anymore. Thinking about the incident on Dust Street while also being alone with another person was obliterating me. I was trembling. I was aching all over. Even in my eyes …

I kept telling the driver, “They don’t have the medicine I need here either!” as I went through seven pharmacies. None of them would sell me the morphine sulfate without a prescription. But finally, the eighth pharmacist said, “We don’t have M-Eslon but we do have Skenan LP, which is the same. We ordered it online for a customer, but he never came to pick it up. Of course it
is
rather expensive …”

I laughed angrily. Glaring at the pharmacist who had to talk in such run-on sentences just to do illegal business … I bought a total of eight boxes of Skenan LP. One for each pharmacy I’d asked! For three times the market price of M-Eslon …

I’d clawed through one of the boxes by the first step I took on the narrow stretch of pavement between the pharmacy and the cab, torn through the plastic casing to pull out the capsule by the second, gulped down the capsule dry on the third, and on the fourth step, got into the car as a brand-new person.

But now I was thinking that that single capsule hadn’t been enough. Just as I was reaching for the packet in my pocket for another, I heard someone call out the number written on the slip in my hand. I was being called from the cash desk. Right then I thought of the old man at that bank I’d gone to with Bedri. And I did the same thing as he had. I waited quietly. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. When my number on the digital screen was replaced by the next, I got up and went to the ticket vendor to get a new queue number. Then I returned to my seat and sat down.

That old man had gotten a new number and continued to wait so he could stay in the crowd. His only concern was to stall his return to the home where he was slowly dying of loneliness, even if for a little while. To talk to someone as he waited at that bank, if he could … when he asked me what grade I was in, that was maybe the first he’d spoken all day. He was so alone that the entire day had passed in silence and he’d wanted to hear the voice of a person speaking to him. But I was so sick that I didn’t want anyone speaking to me. Unlike that old man, I didn’t want to hear anyone’s voice. For I knew I’d have plenty of conversation in a bit when I would stick two bags of money in the cashier’s face! Perhaps if I shut myself up in the reservoir again, I could avoid talking to anyone and await death in silence. But that was also out of the question now! I couldn’t go back to Dust Street as long as those human remains were there. That plot of land in Kandalı was finished for me. Its soil was so tainted that even I couldn’t live on it. Or maybe only I couldn’t live on it. In the whole world, only I …

I was unable to escape this time when a security guard, having glimpsed the number in my hand, said, “They’re calling you. Your number’s come up.”

What happened next was a spectacle that enveloped me. Once he heard the figure I wanted to deposit at the account I would open, the officer immediately took me to the office of the branch director. Thinking he’d stumbled upon a goldmine, the branch director gave an impromptu speech on ways to invest the money but, seeing that I wasn’t interested, he’d said, “We’ll take care of it, don’t you worry,” before shutting up. I signed dozens of documents, and every signature was different than the rest. The branch director even noticed and said, “Just sign your initials, that might be easier.” I felt good about living in times in which people weren’t interrogated over the hefty quantities of money they deposited in banks. I gave silent thanks to all past and present politicians who’d done their best to carve a niche for dirty money, as well as money of dubious origin, in the national economy.

When I left the bank I had nothing more to do. I had to return to my room right away and lock the door. The life on the streets was too personal. You had to face and talk to people for even the most minor things. The world could keep turning without me. So I flagged down a cab and got in …

It didn’t take much time or effort to turn my hotel room into an isolation chamber. Meals were left on my doorstep on a tray so I didn’t have to interact with bellboys. Then I’d leave the empty plates and trays on the doorstep and pull the door shut before anyone saw me. The only problem was the housekeepers who insisted to cleaning the room. The solution I came up with was to limit the cleaning sessions to once per week and on that day, wait in the hallway until the whole thing was over.

Initially I had as much interest in turning on the TV as I had for opening the curtains. But slowly I started doing both, watching the life outside and on TV although I couldn’t touch them. Neither life could do me any harm, since they were both behind glass.

At the end of the thirteenth day I didn’t leave the room, I thought I might need books and a computer. Though my body was accustomed to being inert, my mind wasn’t. My brain had always run at a faster pace than my heart. Therefore I needed to keep it busy at all times. If I didn’t, it screamed like a child who’d discovered his mother’s corpse, and irritated me constantly. I dreamed of a life in which I could take care of everything over the phone. That was how it should be! I had to start with the pharmacy. Its number was in the small plastic bag with the boxes of morphine sulfate. I called and placed my order. However, though I introduced and described myself to him, the pharmacist hung up on me. There was nothing to be done. I knew I’d have to go outside if only for once.

I’d take care of all my business in the same day. I inserted my daily dose of morphine sulfate into my blood and the cash I’d set aside for myself in my pocket and went down to the reception. I told the woman with her name on her chest that I’d like to stay at the hotel another month.

“Sure,” she said at first before curiosity got the better of her and she tried to find out my reasons for staying at such an expensive hotel for so long. To do that, she rambled some indirect queries like every ordinary fraud. But her efforts were fruitless. For every question she asked, I replied with another. So our conversation went something along the lines of:

“Your business has been delayed, I assume?”

“Where’s the nearest bookstore?”

“Go down the main street, to the right two hundred meters away. Is this your first time in Izmir?”

“Where can I find somewhere that sells computers?”

Her chin dropping down level to her name on her chest at not being able to get anything out of me, she was obliged to check the monitor in front of her, saying, “Right, the room is available,” take the money I handed her, and bid me a good day.

As I left the hotel, I was thinking that the woman had been eyeing my clothes the whole time and that I would need new ones so as not to attract any more attention. It was going to be a long and extremely tedious shopping day … just as it turned out to be.

When I returned to my room, however, I had everything I needed. What was more, I’d be able to conduct my whole life on the phone. Most importantly, paying the money for my next order of morphine sulfate up front had convinced the pharmacist that he should never hang up on me again. I was basking in contentment at having minimized the amount of contact I’d have to have with people to go about my daily life.

“Maybe I’ll buy a house,” I’d say, closing my eyes. “I’ll have a house of my own, and I’ll shut the door and leave everyone outside!” Really though, that was a bit tricky. I’d need to be alone with too many people if I were to buy a house. “Maybe later,” I said.

“When I up the dose of the morphine sulfate a bit more. Or a bit later than that. When I have to mainline the morphine sulfate with a needle because swallowing doesn’t cut it. Or maybe a bit later than that. When my veins are too riddled with clots and become useless …”

I could go buy myself a house then. And then I could overdose and die in it! Being found dead in a hotel would be humiliating. They’d find my corpse as soon as it started to smell. Then tens of strange, insolent hands would touch my body. I had to die in such a house that no one could find any flesh on me to touch. I had to find the most remote house in the world. Like that lighthouse in the novel by Jules Verne. I needed to find the house at the edge of the world. I had to decay long before anyone realized I was dead. That’s how they ought to find me. Rotting! I ought to make them sick when they laid eyes on me! It had to be fear at first sight! At least then we’d be even …

I’d been in the hotel for seven months and lived in a state of absolute discipline. My loneliness was at the exact degree it should be. The Internet, books, and me … and maybe, also, the mirrors … All the hotel employees, including the manager, had gotten used to me. No one ever bothered me, even though my presence there remained a mystery. After all, the most important thing was that I pay for the room. I could continue to enjoy my immaculate isolation as long as I kept that up.

As rare as it was, however, I did feel the lack of people around me. I even had moments when I wondered what my life could be like if I were able to touch them or have real relationships with them. Such fear would come over me then that I’d immediately immerse myself in morphine sulfate. At least then I’d be shielded from the panic that threatened to tear me apart. Panic was a cannon covered with poison spikes! It roamed inside me, leaving everything bloody and riddled with holes. But there’d been different effects ever since I’d started shooting up the Skenan LP. I experienced memory loss, though briefly. I’d sit in bed and get my fix, then open my eyes to find myself in the bathroom. I had no idea how long I’d been or how I’d gotten there. Like a sleepwalker, I simply acted without realizing …

I didn’t like this effect. I was especially anxious that I might leave the room when I was in that state. The more anxious I was, though, the more morphine sulfate I needed. I had a sense of being in a true catch-22. I could count only on discipline to overcome the feeling. If I was going to end up in a catch-22, it had to be my own! Every one of my actions had to take place at the same time every day, and I had to be the boss. I had no tolerance for flyaway minutes. Perhaps it was a leftover habit from the dorm … a leftover habit from Azim, to be exact …

I exercised in order to tire out my body. There was a limit to what I could do inside the room. Even so I managed to bring in a treadmill from the hotel’s gym. I thought that by exhausting my body I could prevent myself from leaving the room while under the influence of morphine sulfate. Because I’d realized that locking the door wasn’t enough. Once I even opened my eyes to find myself in the hallway. When I came to, I found myself just standing there on the burgundy carpet of the hallway, a little ways down from the door to my room. Like a statue … and even worse, I was facing the elevator at the end of the hall.

Who knows what I’d do if I went out on the street? I didn’t even want to dwell on it. I hadn’t gone outside in months and didn’t intend to for several more. I’d just hurry to an ATM near the hotel to withdraw cash and back. But that didn’t count as going outside, since I never met anyone’s eyes or touched anyone.

Something was brewing in me, however, and it apparently had to wait for me to sync with the morphine sulfate before it could dart out. I’m not sure who was keeping watch over whom. All I could tell was that both sides lay in wait. At least I did. I ran on the treadmill for hours so I could control the dark side that wanted to take my body outside among the people. Until I collapsed … Aside from that, my life was perfect! Or I was just imagining it, as usual.